Chromebooks

[Simon Ansell]

Seriously considering buying a Chromebook. It's not a dealbreaker but does anyone know of a decent chess Chrome web app that allows you to view/search your own pgn files, or will I have to write it myself? The nearest I've found is "Chess Database Online" that has a 1.2m game db, but you can't use your own files as far as I can tell. A general search of the Chrome Web Store for "chess" returns nothing other than apps that allow you to play the game or tactics training etc.

[Ian Kingston]

I would expect Scid would run on a Chromebook. The same author has some other apps that might be useful.

[Simon Ansell]

Excellent, thanks Ian. Used Scid before on Linux, doesn't show up when you search the web store though.

[Angus French]

I would expect Scid would run on a Chromebook. The same author has some other apps that might be useful.

Not the 'Scid on the go' variant though as that's for Android and Chromebooks have their own flavour of Linux.

[MartinCarpenter]

Chromebooks just have a web broswer so HTML stuff only and no Scid.

You could put Linux on it of course If doing that just for chess and going for the arm chromebook then may want to check if there's a precompiled Scid package for ARM linux first.

[Simon Ansell]

Actually I think Angus is right, this is just an Android app

[Simon Ansell]

You could put Linux on it of course

Dualbooting a Chromebook, why didn't I think of that?

All I want is a chess board viewer that can load a pgn file stored in say, my Google Drive account.

[Roger de Coverly]

All I want is a chess board viewer that can load a pgn file stored in say, my Google Drive account.

There's the site http://www.Nc3Bb4.com which will load a viewer in a Chrome browser.

Disadvantages
(a) Only one game at a time and you might even need to paste the game rather than read it from a file.
(b) The graphics make the chesscasting ones appear state of the art.

(edit) pgn4web, as used on this forum as well, sounds ideal for the task.
Development and support for the Chrome version has been discontinued.

https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/ ... ogleChrome (/edit)

[Simon Ansell]

I really need to be able to search the pgn headers too. There just doesn't seem to be anything out there yet that runs in a web browser.

Looking at writing a simple web app myself to do it (currently reading). Shouldn't be too hard, just need to learn how authorisation and connection to Google Drive works (been meaning to do this for a while anyway) and then use, say, Paolo's pgn4web to display the games. Hardly going to be a competitor to Chessbase but could be an interesting (for me, anyway!) project.

edit, ah, I didn't know about the pgn4web chrome extension in Roger's edit, will investigate further.

[Ian Kingston]

Actually I think Angus is right, this is just an Android app

OK - I thought Chromebooks could run Android apps. Shows what I know.

[Carl Hibbard]

You could put Linux on it of course

Dualbooting a Chromebook, why didn't I think of that?

All I want is a chess board viewer that can load a pgn file stored in say, my Google Drive account.

I have played with a Pixel but prefer my MacBook Air to be honest

[Paolo Casaschi]

Seriously considering buying a Chromebook. It's not a dealbreaker but does anyone know of a decent chess Chrome web app that allows you to view/search your own pgn files, or will I have to write it myself? The nearest I've found is "Chess Database Online" that has a 1.2m game db, but you can't use your own files as far as I can tell. A general search of the Chrome Web Store for "chess" returns nothing other than apps that allow you to play the game or tactics training etc.

I used to regularly update this one: https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/ ... ogleChrome
It might still work both on google chrome and therefore on chromebooks, if you manage to get through the hoops of installing extensions from outside the chrome web store. It did the whole lot:
- detecting links to PGN games (even zipped PGN) and offering an easy way to browse them on an interactive chessboard
- load PGN games from the local file system
- manage to show live games broadcast for live PGN files automatically updating games
- dual interface, either one large chessboard with lot of info (useful for analysis) or multiple chessboard (useful for a tournament live broadcast)
- built-in chess engine and online tablebase access (6 men)

Unfortunately, as you can read from the wiki page, the chrome extension project has been discontinued; at some point in the future, the current extension won't be installed anymore on the latest version of chrome and, if already installed, will stop working. You can read on the wiki page some more details why I regrettably discontinued the project.
If you are interested, I can give you more details about the challenges of keeping up with some new requirements for chrome extensions. In any case you are more than welcome to look at the code and use anything you find interesting, provided that you respect the GPL license principles and make available your extension on similar terms.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Shouldn't be too hard, just need to learn how authorisation and connection to Google Drive works (been meaning to do this for a while anyway) and then use, say, Paolo's pgn4web to display the games.

Last famous words "shouldn't be too hard"
Here you have some interesting reading about the challenges of using pgn4web into the new framework for extensions of chrome:
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.or ... jqPgZ1jxu8

[Paolo Casaschi]

I used to regularly update this one: https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/ ... ogleChrome
It might still work both on google chrome and therefore on chromebooks, if you manage to get through the hoops of installing extensions from outside the chrome web store.

Just managed to install it on the current google chrome stable v25.
Follow these steps and it should work for you as well, both on google chrome on win/mac/linux and a chomebook:
1) go to the google chrome extensions page (chrome menu -> tools -> extensions) and click on the "developer mode" checkbox
2) keep the extensions tab open
3) on a new tab, go to this page: https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/downl ... 2-2.61.crx
4) click to download the crx file Chess-games-viewer-pgn4web-chrome-extension-2.3.2-2.61.crx
5) IT GETS TRICKY HERE, PAY ATTENTION
6) when the download starts ignore the error message at the top of the chrome window, instead look at the download bar at the bottom of the chrome window
7) as soon as you see the download bar at the bottom of the chrome window, click on the crx file downloaded and drag&drop that file on the extensions tab (you first drag the file pointing the mouse on the extension tab in the tab bar, this will activate the extension page, once that is showing, drop the file you are still holing in the middle of the extension page
eigth) click OK to the request for installing the extension

At this point the extension should be installed. Go to the week in chess and right-click on any link to PGN files, or click on the small pawn that should appear at the right of the address bar... the rest should be self-explanatory.

[Simon Ansell]

Hi Paolo,

Thanks for your posts. I did manage to install your extension yesterday and take a quick look - looks potentially very useful and would have done exactly what I need, a shame you can't keep up development - I'm not familiar with the Chrome extension security changes but I understand how frustrating it is as a programmer when new versions or standards appear out of nowhere and break something you've spent a lot of time on.

I was thinking along the lines of not a Chrome extension but instead a hosted web app to access the users Google Drive files and then using the standard pgn4web viewer to display the games, should be possible I think? (but yes, I do tend to throw flippant comments such as "shouldn't be too hard" around too often without doing thorough research!). Will investigate in more detail when I have some time next week.